Anti-gun activists and self-serving politicians are eager to proclaim that there’s no reason for anyone (except the police, of course) to have a magazine that holds more than ten rounds of ammunition. They claim that these “high-capacity” magazines are simply tools to facilitate mass murder. On the surface, this seems logical; however, upon deeper investigation it becomes clear that their claim is nothing more than emotion filled rhetoric . . .

First, a magazine holding more than ten rounds is technically not “high-capacity.” In fact, many modern guns are designed to hold between twelve and thirty rounds of ammo to make them suitable for their intended purpose, whether that’s self-defense, hunting or target practice.

Semantics aside, a magazine capable of holding thirty or even one hundred rounds is just as safe as a magazine capable of holding only ten. Magazines don’t possess magical powers that somehow transform an otherwise sane and upstanding citizen into a maniacal killer bent on mass carnage. Ask yourself, does the possession of a “high-capacity” gasoline can make you more likely to burn down the local day care than one that’s capable of holding only one gallon? Like gasoline cans, magazines are simply tools, nothing more.

So what happens when someone does snap? Wouldn’t reduced capacity magazines limit the damage that the murderer could inflict? It would be nice if it were that simple, but life in the real world almost always works out differently than the utopian dream world that anti-gun activists like to pretend exists.

They’d like you to believe that because reduced capacity magazines force a shooter to reload in order to continue his killing spree, it means an inevitable lull in the shooting (which is sure to take place in dramatic, Michael Bay-style slow motion, just like in the movies), giving a hypothetical Good Samaritan the opportunity to tackle and disarm him. Do you see a problem with this theory?

Picture yourself in the midst of a mass shooting, hiding under a desk wearing noticeably wet pants. (Don’t worry; your secret is safe with me.) You hear a brief pause and the click of the magazine release, followed by the empty mag hitting the floor. Do you A) jump from your hiding position and run towards the shooter while replaying scenes from The Expendables in your head, or B) grab your family and get the hell out of there?

If you’re still unsure, I’ll give you a hint: your membership at the local YMCA gym and all the action movies from Netflix are not going to turn you into Jason Statham.

It’s an epically bad idea, even from a distorted Hollywood perspective of what’s possible. It’s a still worse idea when you realize that even an untrained shooter can change magazines in a little less than one second. Do you really think you have the physical prowess to burst from hiding, cover the distance from you to the shooter, and successfully disarm him in less than one second?

I’m a very well-trained veteran Marine and in excellent physical shape, but unless the armed bad guy was blocking me from the exit, I would not physically engage him in hand to hand combat. I’d either draw my own weapon and eliminate the threat, or grab my family and get them out of there. I recommend you do the same.

What makes ten the “magic” number, anyway? Is the eleventh person somehow more valuable than the tenth? But I digress.

The anti-gun activists believe that the police, unlike citizens, need magazines holding more than ten rounds because they’re often placed in harm’s way. Common sense dictates that everyone — not just the police — needs access to enough ammunition to adequately protect themselves. It’s undoubtedly true that the police are far more likely to encounter a violent situation that must be neutralized with a gun. But when someone does find themselves in that situation, as millions of people do, should their ability to effectively defend themselves depend on whether they are a police officer or a citizen?

Think about it like this; I used to live in an area where flooding was relatively frequent, so I was required by law to purchase flood insurance which would pay off my entire mortgage in the event that a flood destroyed my home. I recently moved to an area where flooding is very infrequent, but still possible. Because I’m now less likely to experience a flood, should my insurance now only pay off half of my mortgage in the event that a flood destroys my home? Of course not, the damage would have the same impact regardless of how statistically likely it was to occur.

Your self-defense is no different. You may not be as likely to be forced to defend yourself with a gun, but if that time comes, is it any less important for you to have the necessary tools than it is for a police officer? In fact, 15 minutes on Google will turn up a plethora of home invasions, robberies, and assaults involving multiple assailants—would you want to face two, three, or even more violent criminals with only 10 rounds?

Some people have claimed, “a few more bullets won’t help you” or “if you can’t do the job with one or two bullets, you shouldn’t have a gun in the first place” but if that were true, why do the police routinely fire hundreds of bullets at a single suspect? Why even after being hit multiple times does the suspect often get up and run away or worse yet, continue attacking the officers? This isn’t a video game. This is real life and it rarely goes according to plan. I will continue shooting the bad guy until he is no longer moving and that might take more than ten rounds—especially if there are multiple bad guys.

If, as the anti-gun crowd claim, a few more bullets won’t increase my safety, then it’s only logical that a few more bullets won’t increase their danger either. In which case, what possible reason could they have for wanting to prevent you and I from owning magazines holding more than ten rounds? It’s not about “gun control,” it’s simply about control.

I will do everything in my power to ensure the safety of my family. That includes a plentiful supply of ammunition, on my body, in my car, and at my home.

This article originally appeared at jeremyknauff.com and is reprinted here with permission.

Ive been making this argument forever, if Adam Lanza had driven through a crowd of kids with a car would the libtards be demanding lower capacity gas tanks? To “limit the amount of damage one car can do?”

It isn’t even as obscure as that. If the Tsarnaev’s hijacked car wasn’t low on fuel they wouldn’t have stopped for gas (when the car-owner fled and called 911) and likely would have made it to Times Square.

Obviously no one should be allowed to own a car that holds more than 10 miles worth of gas.

Excellent article which uses logic and reason to support its assertions.

The only problem is that it’s very difficult to use logic and reason to persuade someone to change a position that wasn’t reached using logic and reason in the first place. Those who advocate for civilian disarmament almost always do so for reasons of emotion. The use of small children as props is simply one of many illustrations of this.

In the Columbine shooting (in 1999, in the middle of the federal Assault Weapons Ban which included magazine capacity limits) on of the shooters used a Hi-Point 995 carbine with 13 10-round magazines firing 96 shots and a 12-gauge pump shotgun that he fired 25 times. If the whole thing where forcing more frequent reloads would give someone the opportunity to disarm the shooter, that should have been the perfect example.

The Dunblaine School Massacre in Scotland catalyzed the British decision to ban all handguns. The accused child molester responsible for this atrocity carried two Browning Hi-Power 9 mm semi-auto pistols (each with a 13-round capacity) and two S&W Model 19 revolvers. The shooter fired a total of 109 shots. His need to periodically reload didn’t significantly impact his ability to complete his planned atrocity.

I wish that some of the gun grabbers would actually study their claims’ likelihood instead of endlessly parroting the same specious talking points.

10 is as arbitrary as 11,12, 9, 20, 7, or 5. and when 10 is deemed constitutional based on no evidence comparing 10 vs 11, they will lower it to 7, then 5, then 1. Its very simple and that’s how this works.

I know I am nit going to want to peek out from cover to see if the shooter is reloading or not. He might not know where I am. Charging someone with a gun is not very smart. What I find scary is we have people creating legislation from movies and fantasy. Not logic and facts.

We had a home attack last year , 3 guys attacked a house that seemed a easy target, they shot at his front door some 42 times, but the door held, then one bad guy tries to get in the back bed room window, at this point the home owner shot the guy in the leg coming in the window…. this was 10.30 AM . 3 different police dept.s cover this area. My point If that door had not held , 10 shots would not do the job.. He had a 5 shot 357 mag. but still no police showed up for 42 mins. I say bunk to 10 rounds , you need all the fire power you can get, a 30 round mag. is the must have now days.. and the attack was out of the blue, know reason why that house… I say have 3 or 4 loaded 30 rounds mags to survive in today’s world..

This post wont be popular but honestly I do think that having to change magazines more often does slow down the carnage being delivered. Especially coming from you average person that does not shoot regularly.

I shoot a lot to include mag changing drills. I can when everything is flowing change a mag PDQ. That said I have miss steps and I see plenty of other shooters that train a lot go through the same thing. This is during training that is low stress. Hence the need for training

Now add to that the stress of actually shooting people in real life. I would imagine for most people the adrenaline is flowing at max rate. It does for me when I hunt deer. (Maybe nutjobs dont get this rush???). That adrenaline is going aide in making mistakes which will very likely result in slower or fumbled mag changes.

That same adrenaline is going to make possible victims, move their arse….fight or flight. True they maybe out of shape and after their run to safety they will be hurting a bit in places they have not used in years, but people do amazing things in fight or flight situations.

The biggest situation that went down supporting lower capacity magazines was the Arizona shooting. The guy was stopped during a mag change, I think because he dropped a fresh mag during the change? Anyhow had he only had a 10 rounds to start off with, that might have been 23 less rounds that came out of his gun.

Ok flame away….I am off to the range to shoot my evil black rifle this AM with its 30 round magazines !!!!

The biggest situation that went down supporting lower capacity magazines was the Arizona shooting. They guy was stopped during a mag change, I think because he dropped a fresh mag during the change?

It isn’t sound to base laws on outliers like mass shootings. Something like 95% of criminal shootings involve the discharge of less than 10 rounds. The Tucson shooting was an outlier among outliers. Almost all mass shooters either successfully reload or carry more than one weapon, or both.

What’s more, in the Tucson case the size of the extended magazine seems to have been instrumental in allowing bystanders to wrestle it away from him. On a 10-round magazine, there would have only been room for one hand on the magazine – the shooter’s. The extra length gave bystanders the grip and leverage required to get it away from him.

In the Sandy Hook case I thought people ran and got free when the freak had to change mags??

I am not saying I am favor of it at all, just that the logic seems sound.

In fact I use that same logic as to why the G34 in the lock box next to my bed has 17 rounds in it plus a spare mag. If multiple perps enter my casa I dont want to have to change mags if I dont have to because of the downtime of a mag change or possibility of fumbling the mag change. Hopefully the wife can get the safe in the closet open before I have to change mags so I can just grab my AR with 30 rounds!!!

In the Sandy Hook case I thought people ran and got free when the freak had to change mags??

This seems to be a media distortion. The claim was 11 kids escaped at one point when he changed magazines. He changed mags 7 times, often when his current mag was nearly half-full. At that rate how is it that everybody in those classrooms didn’t escape?

Dig a little deeper and the answer seems to be that he had a stoppage. The news media, not knowing any different, simply repeated it as him “reloading.” The Aurora Shooter had a stoppage, too, leading him to abandon his rifle. The Clackamas Town Center shooter also had a stoppage, and shot himself immediately thereafter. What do the latter two have in common? High-capacity magazines (and poor training).

Good points. The problem is that all gunfights are different. The Giffords shooter apparently was wading through the crowd, giving a few senior citizens (!) the opportunity to interrupt his mag change. I doubt we’ll see a repeat of that anytime soon.

The big problem with this line of thinking is we’re talking about something like .75 seconds vs 1.5-2 seconds, even for untrained shooters, combined with people conditioned to be panicky about adverse situations making choices in that time frame.

Consider what has to be done in the magazine change time:
1. register that gunfire has stopped
2. determine he’s changing magazines and not just moving to another location to reengage
3. decide to act
4a. decide on path to the shooter to engage. (Outside of about 10-15 feet, you’re screwed, and based on the simulations done by that one sheriff on magazine caps, you’re probably screwed within that distance)
4b. decide on path of egress
5. get out of whatever cover you’re in
6. begin moving
7. engage or flee based on prior decision

Most people can’t process and execute “something in road, move foot from accelerator to brake” in that time frame, which is why you’re supposed to have x number of car lengths between you and the car in front of you for ever so many miles per hour you’re traveling on a road, much less get from a hiding spot to engagement/escape speeds.

Blame the criminals, not the tools. Prosecute the criminals, not the innocent.

A locksmith has tools that help, but in the wrong hands can do evil. A Doctor has tools that help, but in the wrong hands can do evil. In neither case do you limit the tools because they *might* be used for evil in the wrong hands.

Only in Hollywood could such a determination be made. Anyone who has ever been in an environment where weapons fire was brought on unexpectedly knows this, it’s near impossible to hear anything. The ringing in your ears coming from the weapons distorts your hearing. You may be able to hear a mag change (doubtfully, unless you always have hearing protection), but realistically, the only way to know would be to see it. If you can see them change mags, you are in harms way already. But hey, maybe they believe that everyone knows exactly how many rounds are in every type mag and they can just count them down. LOL. Maybe we need to take some of the antis out to the range and run them through the drills, without hearing protection of course. We should start with the Hollywood advocates, like Jim Carrey, Jeremy Renner, Jay Mohr, etc… etc.

The spree killers, being in gun-free zones, are in complete control of the situation. Adam Lanza could have taken a dump or gotten a cup of coffee mid-attack and have been unopposed. The spree killer scenario is probably one where magazine capacity doesn’t change the outcome.

If I wake up in the middle of the night to glass breaking I will grab my Glock but I don’t want to also be toting spare magazines in my underwear. In this case I want capacity.

This is my feeling too. Having to change mags in a home invasion means I am probably done for. 10 rounds are not enough in a two way shooting gallery. In a one way, maybe, but I would not want to bet my life on that.

Fact, many more firearms save many more lives than take lives. Thus, by the numbers, the more ammo you have to save lives outweighs the ammo the criminal has to take lives. The criminal will not be limited by any law. To think a person willing to committ murder will limit themselves to 10 rds or 7 rds is absolutley insanely stupid. In a firefight whether in Vietnam or in your home you are limited in self defense only by your ammo supply and your ability to use it properly.

How is it, reviewing those 76 self defense incidents between 12/26/12 & 2/15/13 from GunsSaveLives.com website we see that 26 incidents had 2 attackers and 8 incidents had 3 to 5 attackers?

Since the police at best only hit their target 15% of the time, that = only 4.5 hits out of a standard 30 round magazine.

Since you antis always infer civilian gun owners are so poorly trained that 7.5% hit rate is an agreeable # to start with.

7.5% x 30 rnd mag = 2.25 rnds hit

So explain again how many rnds does it take to stop an attack?

Oh wait, all self defense courses state clearly, shoot until the attack stops, hmmmm, thats more than 1 rnd eh?

After all 47% of the time, there were multiple attackers, but then your fantasies always outweigh facts eh!

Since the police are that poor of shots, and it takes on average more than 1 shot hit to stop an attack, where again is your logic that civilians don’t encounter the same dangers as police and therefore don’t need to be just as equally armed?

17 rounds of .45 ACP into a suspect hell bent on taking him out, imagine that!

My good friends brother was SWAT and during an encounter with a hopped up on drugs 145lb felon holed up with a hostage, a breach was initiated (shots were fired) where the first team member through, came down on the hostage and bad guy like a sandwich. Now the 1st team member was shall we say NFL linebacker sized and strong as a bull, he had both hands on the bad guys arm, and couldn’t stop him from turning the hand gun towards him. My friend, the second member through the door in the breach, didn’t hesitate, and put a .40 right beside the bad guys nose, an immediate kill shot, and the bad guy still struggled for almost 10 seconds before his body let him know he was dead! Lot can happen in 10 seconds.

The distance for such a shot was less than 3ft.

The US Army in the Phillipine’s fighting Moro warriors after we took the Phillipine’s from the Spanish in the little dustup we had, had then standard Army issue .38 spcl. revolvers, and many records of Moro warriors taking out multiple soldiers even after being riddled with .38 spcl. rounds. It was why the 1911 in .45 ACP was developed, and as noted in the link above, even then a bad guy can absorb a lot of .45 ACP and keep going until that certain kill shot can be used.

But who here can or will even claim to make such a SINGLE FIRST shot in the heat of an exchange of gunfire, no sane person familiar with firearms will!

So unless the antis can magically transport the police via Star Trek technology, their response time will never equal the 2-3 minutes response time a person on site, or and armed teacher could respond in.

I think we should mandate government-subsidized speed loaders to save our thumbs.

I live in California-stan and therefore must deal with the dreaded “bullet-button” (“cartridge” button, but I digress). I’ve tried explaining the safety-at-the-range problem this creates for everyone to name-brand, national political figures while sitting next to them. And they really do not care be ause mag limits and bullet-buttons test well. It’s a political win for them.

So the thing I’d caution is that winning the mag-change argument will refocus to making doing so impossible by adding restrictive mag releases for every gun. Believe me, that is one goal.

It’s hard to describe, but the politi-crats very astutely set the conversation boundaries and then make your defense of normal and good appear subversive. And one of the most important factors: these powerful, extremely wealthy aristocrats are *nice.* They are very charming to interact with, even as you know they are nitwits, even evil.

In the end, facts don’t matter. Riding populist ponies to victory does. And if that precludes you owning “armor-piercing bullets” or “weapons of war,” so much the better.

Another possibility that lawmakers seem to be ignoring is the ironically named New York reload.* It seems like a bunch of these mass shootings seem to be operating off the same shitty hollywood trope that dictates it’s easier to carry six guns than 5 magazines. My prediction is even if “high capacity” magazines are banned, the next step will be to regulate the number of guns on your person.

*For the record, I’m not knocking BUG doctrine, just the extremes some parties are willing to take it

Thanks for the feedback everyone, and thank you Robert and Dan for posting it. I have many more available if you’d like to post them as well…I was working on a book shooting down the myths about gun control and was about 70% complete, but unfortunately Glenn Beck is releasing his book on the exact same topic this week so mine would have gotten lost in the media buzz.

@the last Marine out, I likely will, I just plan to wait until GB’s buzz on his book dies down. In the meantime, I plan to use some of the content I’ve already produced for it on my own blog and other blogs to educate those people who are undecided or who have open minds.

In Magnolia Texas last January, three non-English speaking men with masks broke into a home with mother and 6 yr old child alone. They were after cash and she had none so she led them to the bedroom where she had a pistol on a shelf. The kid let the dogs in about that time and she was able to get the gun when they were distracted. She shot one in the stomach. At this point I am screaming at the newspaper “Keep Shooting!” She did not and one of the healthy ones grabbed her gun.

Luckily these guys just wanted cash and left with her gun and their wounded pal who needed help. She and her kid are lucky to be alive and this story backs up what is being said in this post about training and number of cartridges.

Had she kept firing would 7 bullets fired by a woman that had no idea what she was doing be enough to stop 3 guys? She was lucky they were close on the first shot or she might have missed. (4 people in a bedroom is tight and she may not have hit the one she was aiming at if she was in fact aiming the gun) 7 bullets in the hands of an experienced shooter might not have been enough to stop 3 guys.

What I absolutely love is that people still have this ill-concieved notion that reloading even CAUSES a lull in a shooter’s firing. It doesn’t. The only way that would be true is if the shooter was firing as fast as he could possibly pull the trigger, and then stopped to reload.

Ask yourself – how long was the Newtown shooter going around killing those kids? Do you think he killed 20 kids in 20 seconds and then reloaded and it was over? Uh… probably not. I don’t remember the report but I think it was at least 10 minutes. 10 minutes…20 kids… that’s 30 seconds average between kids. If it was longer than its an even longer time between shootings. The point is that reloading fits very easily into the time that the shooter spent walking from one child to another (5? 10? 15?45 seconds?), or from one classroom to another.

We are building this image in our minds of a movie scene where the guy is letting rip on full auto then everything stops as he reloads. that’s not even remotely close to real life in these kinds of mass shootings. Reloading isn’t just a “time-slower,” it’s an absolutely non factor in these situations.

It only seems fair–if the politicians can declare a limit to the number of bullets I can have in a magazine, then I get to declare a limit to the number of dollars they can take from me in any given year. After all, what they already steal should be enough to do the job…

There was a video on a gun site (can’t remember where), where an experienced and an inexperienced shooter each went through a drill firing off 30 shots from an AR-15, then reloaded and fired off the next mag. They then did a drill where a hidden person attempted to rush the shooter before they could get the next mag into operation. In each case the gun was firing again within 1.5 seconds (experienced shooter) and 3 seconds (inexperienced shooter). This was either one or two seconds before the hidden person could get to the shooter. The distance was about 20 feet. There was no way a mag change enabled the shooter to be tackled. Getting at a shooter as they come through a doorway might be the only chance.

I live in Canada and at one time in our history we were able to own guns that held a capacity of more than ten rounds. Our government has enacted a law which requires pistols magazines to only hold ten rounds. Of course, this was not due to gun violence, but was due to the same argument now in effect in the US. Gun control activists demanded a reduced number of rounds because they felt it would somehow make people safer, and they reasoned that civilians didn’t need more than ten.

The population in Canada versus the US is disproportionally smaller and always has been/always will be. With a population in the US the size that it is and growing every year, plus the addition of your constitution, I would urge my American brothers to continue fighting for their constitutional rights.

If you look at the history of Canada (being a territory of the British Crown) you’ll see that the monarchy has always wanted to control it’s citizens for fear of them rising up against the ruling class.

America was founded by individuals seeking separation from the monarchy and instituted the constitution as a means of ensuring that the citizens were able to defend themselves and not be controlled by their government.

As US citizens it is your constitutional right to fight against tyranny and demand that the government not strip you of the means to protect yourself.

On another note, we also have laws dictating the length of knives we are allowed to carry on us as well. So you can see how far our government has gone with this issue of protecting yourself.